Baidu has their own Web tracker now, named as Baidu Tongji. Currently, it was in private beta, only those who receive the invites can test their tracker system. With the launched of Baidu Tongji, that reminds me how a search engine in China can grow to become a portal, just like Google in the U.S. Sometimes I can’t understand why the big players seem to be interested in offering a one-stop services for its users. However, it’s also a good news especially a search engine that know the user behavior of Chinese surfers can provide extra services for the China people there.

Google is rumored to be launched its own browser. Will it just a same rumor again like three years ago when they registered the GBrowser domain name? Will Google launch GBrowser? I can’t think of any big project that interested Google right now other than expansion into Asian countries such as China, Korea and this GBrowser.

Docstoc, a public document repository has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding. It is a site that allowed users, though currently in private beta, to store, search, and share their documents online. Additionally, users are also allowed to rate the documents posted by others in this Docstoc platform, works similarly to the services that offered by Scribd. If an user do not find what she want in Docstoc, she can request the document online and let others users to help her. Knowing that social networking site is popular in this recent years, Docstoc also provided the means of embed codes for users to post their documents to their MySpace site or blogs.

Docstoc is based in Los Angeles and the founder of Docstoc is Jason Nazar, previously working as a partner at a venture capital firm. If you want to learn more about Docstoc, there is a “demo video” on the use of Docstoc in YouTube, as embedded in the below.

Baidu, the No.1 search engine in the Chinese market will release its own instant messenger (IM) software. At the moment, the baidu.im was redirect to Google home page, and I wonder what will be the subdomain of Baidu going to use for this new IM software. From the recent buzz on the Web, Baidu will release this IM software together with its email application as their major product plan of this 2007. In particular, Baidu IM can be download as a client version, its size of beta release is about 4MB, features such as voicemail, online chat are available in this client.

Though QQ IM services is well-known in the China market, that hasn’t stopped Baidu from offering its own “IM” services. But I think it will be an interested application for the Chinese people in China, Baidu brand name is there, and search engine, email system, and this IM are the products that China people want. If Baidu bundle these IM and email application with their search engine, they will build a solid empire in a long, long time. Then, we should forget about Google and Yahoo! in China.

I will report back on this Baidu IM when it officially launched in the market. Stay tuned.

I just came across that Microsoft has improved their images search technologies whereby users can now filtering the search through keywords such as filter:face, filter:portrait, and filter:bw. Note that face mean the search results will show faces of the objects, and bw mean black and white images. As stated in official blog of Microsoft’s Live Search Team, several examples are provided as links so that users can well differentiate how the filtering system works. However, when I tested the Windows Live images search engine through the input of keyword filter:color, it works but the black and white images also appeared on the result page. I think it will be cool to see Microsoft further improves their images search by better filtering the images in not only portrait, but also the landscape format.

Search engines supposed to be acted in a more user-friendly manner. I believe people are more favor of a single click button instead of typing the keyword, i.e. filter:XXX, if Microsoft can develop that, more people will come to Windows Live to search the images that they want.

Microsoft to acquiring an advertisement exchange company, i.e. AdECN, this is their third acquisition-in-progress after the acquisition of Screentonic and aQuantive for the past two months, three advertising platforms acquisition in a row could have made Microsoft a new weapon and a strong position in its war with rival Google. Well, as usual there is no financial terms disclosed by Microsoft and AdECN yet. However, I think Google and Yahoo as well feel the heat right now, especially Google since one of their publishers Digg has announced the changed of ads partner two days ago. What attracted Microsoft was the technology owned by AdECN, its technology works like a stock exchange or a hub, in technology sense, where the advertising networks can buy and sell display advertisement in a real-time auction marketplace. Thus, this exchange enabled AdECN a platform that gather a larger pool of supply and demand for the advertising clients. Meanwhile, Microsoft is gearing up to become an even bigger player in the Web advertising market by not only this acquisition, but also the setting up of an organization, i.e. Internet Services Research Center, an applied research organization dedicated to accelerating innovations in search and advertisement technologies and delivering them more rapidly to advertisers and customers.

“Both Microsoft and AdECN have a deep commitment to creating the technologies and platforms that enable advertisers and publishers to maximize their ROI in the digital marketplace,” said Kevin Johnson, president, Platforms and Services Division at Microsoft. “We believe the addition of AdECN to the Microsoft portfolio is a perfect fit and will create more efficiency for the industry by forming a more robust marketplace between advertisers and publishers, aggregating more supply and demand. This is good for the whole advertising industry.” Said in a press release (PDF).

AdECN is a startup founded in year 2003 and currently its headquarter is based in Santa Barbara, California.

I just came across Ustream.tv profile on the list of Facebook application’s pages. A bit of googling showed that this application (app) is not developed by the official Ustream.tv team itself, it looks like one of the Ustream.tv users have developed it in order to optimize the power of Facebook app. However, I believe it poised to capture a lot of Facebook users in the near future due to there is some foresee demand of this type of app on the Facebook platform. Ustream.tv was initially created as a platform to encourage users to post live video of Hollywood stars caught on the street, however it grew so well till I even believed that they do not need to develop a sort of this Facebook app in order to attract more users.

Whether this app will be a popular app among the Facebook users, that’s not an important issue here. What the users want in the real life is a technology that let them show their real-time slice of their life to their close friends, or family members. Visit also these Facebook app developed by Kyte.tv and Justin.tv.

Mobikade, a popular ad-funded mobile social networking site has launched in the U.K. today. It is a mobile SNS and free games site jointly organized by Global Network Solutions Europe and Excite Japan. The general thinking is that the mobile concentration of the U.K. population is very high, i.e. six million according to a statistical report in U.K. and thus, it has emerged as the first target market of Mobikade’s overseas venture. To talk about Mobikade’s features, it is a full-fledge mobile site that comprised of games developed from Japan, Korea, US, and the Europe, mainly the puzzle games such as Sudoku and some of the casino games. In addition, Mobikade offered users the freedom to create their own private groups, where they can share photos, blogs, and interest among themselves. Meanwhile, it also tapped into the rising popularity of Twitter by offered the Twitter-like micro-blogging feature, the personal mobile space to be provided to every users in order to keep track what’s new in one’s life, in the posting title that entitled, “What’s up now?” What sets Mobikade apart is the market-retain scheme, i.e. the point system that reward the users with every move made by them. Users have the chances to win Sony PlayStation 3 Console, iTube, Louis Vuitton and other prizes if they have accumulated for more than 1,000 points or above.

Inevitably, Mobikade has a big goal in mind, with the short-term goal to acquire 200,000 users by March 2008, and with plans to expand into other European markets such as Italy and Germany.

You can visit the Mobikade U.K. site by clicking here.